AutoHotkey News 2025-01-30 It’s time to take back your life!

AutoHotkey Newsletter

Howdy,

I was reading this article which estimated the number of hours wasted per day by Industry on mundane tasks.

Horizontal bar chart titled Hours Wasted Per Day on Repetitive Computer Tasks by Industry, ranking 14 industries from 3.5 hours (public services and

So, my question to you is:

How many hours a day do you waste?

And what would you do with those hours you’ve gained back through automation?

Small businesses are increasingly turning to automation as a powerful tool to level the playing field with larger competitors.

In fact, 88% of small business owners report that automation enables them to compete more effectively by helping them operate more efficiently, reduce errors, and improve customer service.

As I’ve said before:

Knowledge is power.  Automation knowledge is a Super-Power

If you’d like help, check our consultation prices and then book a call with us by looking at my calendar.

Now on with the show…

Learn how to Master VSCode Make the switch to v2 Intro to AutoHotkey Intermediate AutoHotkey Intermediate ObjectsGUIs are Easy w/AutoHotkey Access all our Courses; Quit when you want

Running out of Hotkeys❓

Isaias and I were discussing a weird update to VS code.  The update mentioned you could now “use the Insert key…”

Both of us were laughing because it’s one of the most un-used keys ever made!

I blocked the Insert key and Numpad Insert key at least 12 years ago with the following code:

  • Insert::Return ;Disable Insert command
  • NumpadIns::Return ;Disable Insert key on 10-key Numpad

But then I realized, instead of blocking it, we should repurpose it.

With that idea in mind we went on to demonstrate a few additional ways you can play with hotkeys to have additional actions.  (Watch for long-press or double press etc.)

You can check them out in this video.

Showing mulitple ways to define hotkeys for an unused key on your Keyboard
Showing mulitple ways to define hotkeys for an unused key on your Keyboard2


Menus in AutoHotkey v2 rock❗

During an AutoHotkey Hero call a hero member wanted to learn about creating menus.

Isaias gave a great overview of how easy it is to create menus, sub-menus and add icons.

Learning Menus in AutoHotkey v2 [Excerpt from AHK Hero call]
Learning Menus in AutoHotkey v2 [Excerpt from AHK Hero call]

If you want to learn more about GUIs you should consider our Intro to GUIs course.

There is over 4.5 hours of content broken-down into bite-size videos.  And it, like all our other courses, comes with a 200% money back guarantee !


Improving People’s Lives: Story #36

I helped a client record tutorials.  Unfortunately sometimes, due to background noise or low bandwidth, some of her lecture was garbled.

She’s very busy so, instead of taking up her time to “patch” the videos, we used Eleven Labs to clone her voice.

I was amazed that, when I swapped out the cloned patches, it was virtually impossible to determine which was her and which was her cloned voice!


What we’re reading


AI / Chat GPT-3 News / Usage


⚡️Productivity tips: Plan for “tomorrow”

When I say “tomorrow”, I don’t mean some random day in the far off future, I literally mean, at the end of the day, outline what it is you need to get done the following day.

It’s amazing how much your subconscious will help you during your sleep!


A spot of Humor  12 Funniest Times Facebook Fact Checked the Babylon Bee

The 12 Funniest Times Facebook Fact Checked The Babylon Bee
The 12 Funniest Times Facebook Fact Checked The Babylon Bee


What we utomated this week with AutoHotkey #73

This week we had 236 AutoHotkey files that we worked on.  You can check them out in this video.

#73 What we automated with AutoHotkey
#73 What we automated with AutoHotkey


Client’s say…

The content is great in general and often questions can actually help and improve interest in AutoHotKey. —  Rodrigo Costa


Cartoon superhero mascot in green costume beside the bold text AHK Hero on a yellow background AHK Hero

Consider joining the AHK Hero club! Members receive 25% off courses, consultations, tutoring, done for you project work, etc.    Currently we have over 372 hours of recordings teaching AutoHotkey that is exclusive to AHK Hero members❗

You can watch 1 hour a day for a year and not repeat content!  That’s a lot of AHK Learning!

During this Friday’s call we’re planning to discuss:

  • Help AHK Hero Members with their Questions & Code
  • Converting FlexiFinder to handle the equal sign in the .ini file (or changing to json)
  • When you should use ClipWait and when it is not needed
  • Working from Memory instead of a file
  • Example tasks you should use AI for verse Program directly
  • FileMove, FileDelete, and FileRecycle
  • Programmatically determining the File delimiter

They also have access to exclusive & pre-released content and a 3 hours a week where we help people with their AHK issues (the Saturday calls are geared towards people new to AutoHotkey.)


️ Quotable quotes

  • When experiencing problems with tools, typically you should blame the operator, not the tool — Joe Glines
  • If it doesn’t make dollars, it doesn’t make sense — Grandma
  • The question isn’t who is going to let me it’s who is going to stop me — Ayn Rand
  • As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another — Proverbs 27:17
  • Motion beats meditation — Gary Halbert

AHK Newsletter⏩SHARE WITH A FRIEND⏩

Do you know someone that would benefit from learning useful automation tips like the gems in today’s issue?  Take a second and forward this newsletter and bask in the glow of their undying gratitude.  Was this email forwarded to you?

Sign up for this Newsletter here.  We never share your email with anyone.  Ever!


The-Automator

Joe, Isaias, Irfan, Rizwan and staff


P.S. So %name%, how much time do you waste daily on mundane tasks that could be automated?

Why don’t you automate more?

Personally, I used to spend 1/3rd of my day automating what I did.  How much do you spend?   Learning AutoHotkey is, by far, one of the best ways to automate the mundane❗

And don’t forget, all of our courses come with a 200% money-back guarantee !

How to Personalize SciTE Intellisense | Speed-up your AutoHotkey coding with this amazing SciTE hack

Personalize SciTE IntellisenseIn this post I leverage two different scripts where I demonstrate how to personalize SciTE Intellisense / Autocorrect.   Both are great ways Personalize SciTE Intellisense to increase your productivity while coding!

Personalize SciTE Intellisense  by Adding Functions, Labels and variables

This script can be used to point to specific files/folders and grab labels, functions, etc. and pull them into your Intellisense for you.   This script will generate a “user.ahk.api” file in your default SciTE library and only needs to be run periodically (when you have new functions/labels you want to include).

  • Save BuildUserAhkApi.ahk to a location on your computer (if you save it in your local \lib\folder you will not need to #include it!)
  • From a separate file, call the function and tell it what file(s) /directory you want it to review and what you want it to include (functions and/or labels).  You can also decide to be recursive or not.   I had it import all of my functions from my standard AutoHotkey\lib\ folder but did not include my labels (as they’re really only relevant for an active script).
  • Here is the function and parameters (the last one should not be used):  BuildUserAhkApi(AhkScriptPath, [OverwriteAhkApi, RecurseIncludes, Labels, WrapWidth, AhkApiPath, RecursionCall])
  • Here is how I called mine (note you’ll need to dupate the destination path:
BuildUserAhkApi("B:\Progs\AutoHotkey_L\Lib\", 0, 0, 0, 265, "C:\Scite_Install\SciTE_Custom\user.ahk.api")

Video walk through how to Personalize SciTE Intellisense :

Adding Functions, Labels, Variables from your current file to your SciTE Intellisense / Autocorrect

In this second example I demonstrate how you can have variables, labels, functions in your current script populate the SciTE Intellisense / Autocorrect.  If you’re like me, you’ll LOVE this functionality because it will help prompt you of the variables, functions, labels you have in the current saved script.  This can drastically increase your productivity!

  • Save AutoComplete.lua to SciTE default directory  ;(See attached or download here)
  • Save UserLuaScript.lua to SciTE default directory (append if you have something there already –I had this file but it does not show up under Option)
  • I’m beta testing this but right now it looks like it works fine-  I added one line @ row 282 to my version . This tells SciTE to update all the time (not waiting for the document to be saved).  So far it seems to work fine but I’m going to give it a bit before recommending…
local events = {
    OnChar          = handleChar,
    OnKey           = handleKey,
    OnSave          = buildNames,
    OnUpdateUI      = buildNames, --I added this line @ line 282 
    OnSwitchFile    = function()

 

Two women smiling and looking at a computer screen together in a bright office, one pointing at the monitor.